Here is the new must-read post-election essay. In this case it’s a rant of the highest order.
Comments
The fabulous fulminating frogman — 21 Comments
It’s a wonderful rant – reminiscent of the rants of the Founders and Framers. Perhaps I’ll print, laminate, and hang it. The loss of the republic is one thing — hardly anyone knows what a republic is. But everyone knows being like the French is tré¨s tré¨s mauvais.
His message is something on the line of, “Stand strong and don’t let the character of the American nation change,” but the whole point of lamenting the results of these elections is the realization that the American nation’s character already has changed.
As a not-so-fabulous pontificating Mediterranean East Coast surfer and jellyfish sting avoider, I have no prophecies to make, not just because I’m not a prophet but also because the Biblical concept of prophecy is that of a conditional branching, not the deterministic “That’s how it’s going to be, Oedipus, and anything you try to stop it will only make it happen” fortune-telling of paganism.
All I have to offer is the scenario where the United States of America as a lighthouse and beacon of freedom makes way to remnant lighthouses and beacons of freedom across the country, where the most important consideration is to hold at bay the onslaught of the regime and its zombies both ideological and physical. Ideologically, this will have to mean nipping the “Others will do it for me” mentality in the bud as soon as it is spotted, and physically it may come to yet another war of secession, in which the regime will try to bring the remnant conservative communities into its fold by force.
Another possible route is by initiating a reversal of the Gramscian Long March, with conservatives taking back the education centers and media outlets from the Left. However, while the Marxists were able to do this slowly but easily because of right-wing acquiescence (Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attempts at resistance were quickly quashed on the pretext of “not stooping to the other side’s level”), the Marxists will be watchful for their dominance and won’t let the conservatives cut the tiniest crack to wedge through. So, while reversing the Long March would be the most desirable, I don’t know if it’s possible at all, and if it isn’t, that leaves conservatives only with the remnant option above.
But this is all my personal view. There may be other options I didn’t think of. My comment was meant to dispute the Dissident Frogman’s contention that this has been merely an electoral defeat and not the revelation of a changed nation.
Yeah, that’s more like it, frogman. Much more like it.
We are not a changed nation; we are a divided nation. Division from the Revolutionary War to the present age has been constant and America has always chosen the right side of the divide. That is the theme that frogman alerts us to. That is the revelation which should uphold us and stir our resolve.
Let the election serve as a revelation that our nation is divided into basically two camps. If there were a Cyrus the Great, we might live in peace. There is not. Instead there is an Obama the Divider, and the revelation should be either fight or become a slave.
Now, as in revolutionary times, will the exigencies force either triumph or apathy from men.
If we can pass a measure for charter schools in my blue state (and we did pass it, but I double-checked just in case), then there is a hope that we can at least create a system for truly educating our young people. We need a system that teaches critical thinking. For all the jabber about educating kids to compete in the global market place, we really don’t do a lot to make that happen. We seem far more interested in turning out politically correct non-thinkers. It’s no wonder that they don’t want to go into the hard sciences. They don’t have the training to think logically. And they are so terribly clueless about the history of this country.
An excellent essay. Maybe, just maybe, the Obami will pass some laws that most Americans will be enthusiastic again breaking. That would lead to a way back.
…and again, much prefer this tack to Hinderaker’s.
I’m split.
My hope for America’s prosperity (in a macro sense) is down. This means I know a lot of hardship is coming to a lot of people.
But I know that me and my family will do well as we consistently make good decisions, work hard and give of ourselves.
The worst part of the election is not knowing how National Security will turn out.
As artfldgr has warned us for years about what we aren’t paying attention to – these things are what gives me the most impending doom.
I BELIEVE that things will be negative in the foriegn policy arena with Obama at the helm.
To the degree – We won’t know till it’s done.
It could be -1 or -10 on a scale of positive 10 to negative 10.
But what really is negative 10? World War 3? The dollar not being the world currency, total war with nations claiming what is owed them? Biological weapons? Nuclear? Or will it be skirmishes here and there like we see in the news today?
Baklava,
I believe the impending doom lurks on the fiscal-economic front. Time is running out on the debt clock.
WWIII, or so it should be known as, already happened, Baklava. It was also called the Cold War …and might be called the Proxy War.
We won …though as artfldgr correctly points out: “kind of”.
…at the least, there’s no longer a USSR, nor an Eastern Bloc.
WWIV …the Islamic War, or the second Hundred Years War …or worse yet, The Caliphate War …is still in the beginning stages. With the last election, we’re only marginally sure how it will turn out; good for all if the Pan-Pacific Alliance actually comes to be in the latest incarnation of the Great Game though (in which case, Joss Whedon becomes half prophetic, with the semi-prescient Serenity/Firefly series’ cultural back-story). “Last man standing” and all that.
…and yeah, this is me being extremely pessimistic and entirely pedantic (I just know how some to-be-famous future historian is going to write this down).
Well, I don’t pretend to know precisely what the GOP should do. But I know what it should NOT do:
The article doesn’t say this, but reading between the lines, the Obama campaign assumed that reliable voters would show up, and that high-information voters would make up their minds based on the large amount of non-TV-ad inputs they already had, and instead played largely for those who knew so little their minds could be changed by a few TV ads.
Therefore, we need to target low-information ignoramuses and convince (not necessarily persuade) them to vote for liberty instead of slavery.
Among the reasons I’m despondent about the election is that the media won. They won big. Their outrageous slant to the Democratic/liberal/progressive/leftist side won an election, and they’re not paying a price for it.
–—
I renew my call: Boycott NBC. Someone has to pay a price. At some point we must either change the game or simply resign ourselves to losing, given the game’s current rules and current players.
In the case of the second article, it’s the comments that are worth reading. There are numerous suggestions for neutralizing the power and influence of the media. I particularly like comment #4 by Andrew X, who advocates using the phrase “Socialist Establishment” frequently in conversation.
As for me, I quit watching TV news on Election Night 2008, and largely stopped watching TV altogether. I kept my cable subscription mostly just to watch baseball, but I haven’t even watched much of that in the last couple of years.
Yesterday I cancelled my cable subscription, and will be returning my converter boxes on Saturday. Starve the beast. Burn the media down.
I thought it was bad enough that independents decided elections, but now it appears that it’s the genuinely ignorant who do.
(Isn’t it an Alinsky tenet that an excellent weapon is ridicule?)
MJR Oh sweet baby Jesus, that is so wrong on so many levels I can’t begin to list them.
…I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society…but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth” for his followers.
There is simply no way to combat this kind of moonbattery. Though, to give them credit, a handful of Amazon reviewers tried.
@Baklava : at 7:38 pm Davisbr, you kidding me???
LOL.
Only partially my friend.
M J R:
The 5-star and 2-star reviews were pretty good.
Well, I’ll be!
I thought there were only one-star reviews, except for the sole (sarcastic) five-star review. So I went back to have another look, and lo and behold, yes, there was a two-star review in there (second one from the beginning).
Thanks for following the link . . .
So nice to see the Frogman back. It’s too bad that it takes a calamity (the election of Hollande or the recent unpleasantness) to goad him into writing. Thanks, bro!
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It’s a wonderful rant – reminiscent of the rants of the Founders and Framers. Perhaps I’ll print, laminate, and hang it. The loss of the republic is one thing — hardly anyone knows what a republic is. But everyone knows being like the French is tré¨s tré¨s mauvais.
His message is something on the line of, “Stand strong and don’t let the character of the American nation change,” but the whole point of lamenting the results of these elections is the realization that the American nation’s character already has changed.
As a not-so-fabulous pontificating Mediterranean East Coast surfer and jellyfish sting avoider, I have no prophecies to make, not just because I’m not a prophet but also because the Biblical concept of prophecy is that of a conditional branching, not the deterministic “That’s how it’s going to be, Oedipus, and anything you try to stop it will only make it happen” fortune-telling of paganism.
All I have to offer is the scenario where the United States of America as a lighthouse and beacon of freedom makes way to remnant lighthouses and beacons of freedom across the country, where the most important consideration is to hold at bay the onslaught of the regime and its zombies both ideological and physical. Ideologically, this will have to mean nipping the “Others will do it for me” mentality in the bud as soon as it is spotted, and physically it may come to yet another war of secession, in which the regime will try to bring the remnant conservative communities into its fold by force.
Another possible route is by initiating a reversal of the Gramscian Long March, with conservatives taking back the education centers and media outlets from the Left. However, while the Marxists were able to do this slowly but easily because of right-wing acquiescence (Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s attempts at resistance were quickly quashed on the pretext of “not stooping to the other side’s level”), the Marxists will be watchful for their dominance and won’t let the conservatives cut the tiniest crack to wedge through. So, while reversing the Long March would be the most desirable, I don’t know if it’s possible at all, and if it isn’t, that leaves conservatives only with the remnant option above.
But this is all my personal view. There may be other options I didn’t think of. My comment was meant to dispute the Dissident Frogman’s contention that this has been merely an electoral defeat and not the revelation of a changed nation.
Yeah, that’s more like it, frogman. Much more like it.
We are not a changed nation; we are a divided nation. Division from the Revolutionary War to the present age has been constant and America has always chosen the right side of the divide. That is the theme that frogman alerts us to. That is the revelation which should uphold us and stir our resolve.
Let the election serve as a revelation that our nation is divided into basically two camps. If there were a Cyrus the Great, we might live in peace. There is not. Instead there is an Obama the Divider, and the revelation should be either fight or become a slave.
Now, as in revolutionary times, will the exigencies force either triumph or apathy from men.
If we can pass a measure for charter schools in my blue state (and we did pass it, but I double-checked just in case), then there is a hope that we can at least create a system for truly educating our young people. We need a system that teaches critical thinking. For all the jabber about educating kids to compete in the global market place, we really don’t do a lot to make that happen. We seem far more interested in turning out politically correct non-thinkers. It’s no wonder that they don’t want to go into the hard sciences. They don’t have the training to think logically. And they are so terribly clueless about the history of this country.
An excellent essay. Maybe, just maybe, the Obami will pass some laws that most Americans will be enthusiastic again breaking. That would lead to a way back.
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/11/14/time-to-move-on-from-the-gop/
I like the frogman.
On the other hand, like my Daddy used to say: “Son. Rant in one hand and crap in the other and tell me which one fills up first”.
Last night’s episode of Doomsday Preppers on Nat’l Geographic channel wasn’t that great. Not enough useful information for what’s coming.
Somehow I skipped over this post when I was browsing through the other posts this morning.
But I did read it, thanks to Teri’s link in the other thread.
…and again, much prefer this tack to Hinderaker’s.
I’m split.
My hope for America’s prosperity (in a macro sense) is down. This means I know a lot of hardship is coming to a lot of people.
But I know that me and my family will do well as we consistently make good decisions, work hard and give of ourselves.
The worst part of the election is not knowing how National Security will turn out.
As artfldgr has warned us for years about what we aren’t paying attention to – these things are what gives me the most impending doom.
I BELIEVE that things will be negative in the foriegn policy arena with Obama at the helm.
To the degree – We won’t know till it’s done.
It could be -1 or -10 on a scale of positive 10 to negative 10.
But what really is negative 10? World War 3? The dollar not being the world currency, total war with nations claiming what is owed them? Biological weapons? Nuclear? Or will it be skirmishes here and there like we see in the news today?
Baklava,
I believe the impending doom lurks on the fiscal-economic front. Time is running out on the debt clock.
WWIII, or so it should be known as, already happened, Baklava. It was also called the Cold War …and might be called the Proxy War.
We won …though as artfldgr correctly points out: “kind of”.
…at the least, there’s no longer a USSR, nor an Eastern Bloc.
WWIV …the Islamic War, or the second Hundred Years War …or worse yet, The Caliphate War …is still in the beginning stages. With the last election, we’re only marginally sure how it will turn out; good for all if the Pan-Pacific Alliance actually comes to be in the latest incarnation of the Great Game though (in which case, Joss Whedon becomes half prophetic, with the semi-prescient Serenity/Firefly series’ cultural back-story). “Last man standing” and all that.
…and yeah, this is me being extremely pessimistic and entirely pedantic (I just know how some to-be-famous future historian is going to write this down).
Well, I don’t pretend to know precisely what the GOP should do. But I know what it should NOT do:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-game-take-on-what-gop-should-do.html
I think Sailor has it right: no matter what, don’t compromise basic principles in the hopes of ‘winning the girl’.
Parker,
I agree.
It will be calamity for all that way as well.
It’ll be HARDER for the poor and non-able bodied.
We will all be tested as human beings and Christians because we’ll have to struggle to survive and care for everyone around us.
As an able-bodied person with 50 skills, I have more control over earning and caring for my immediate family.
I don’t have any control over those freaks of the world who want to destroy it with biological, chemical and nuclear warfare.
Davisbr,
you kidding me???
OK. I’ll grant you the naming.
But millions were killed during World War 2.
I’m talking millions could be killed during World War ‘X’
How bad could it get under a boy president?
Among the numerous “must-read” election post-mortem articles, I submit the following two from Ace of Spades:
Obama’s TV Ad Campaign Targeted Low-Information, Unlikelier Voters In Cable Reruns
Therefore, we need to target low-information ignoramuses and convince (not necessarily persuade) them to vote for liberty instead of slavery.
Krugman, Lefties Advise “No Compromise” Policy For Obama
In the case of the second article, it’s the comments that are worth reading. There are numerous suggestions for neutralizing the power and influence of the media. I particularly like comment #4 by Andrew X, who advocates using the phrase “Socialist Establishment” frequently in conversation.
As for me, I quit watching TV news on Election Night 2008, and largely stopped watching TV altogether. I kept my cable subscription mostly just to watch baseball, but I haven’t even watched much of that in the last couple of years.
Yesterday I cancelled my cable subscription, and will be returning my converter boxes on Saturday. Starve the beast. Burn the media down.
I thought it was bad enough that independents decided elections, but now it appears that it’s the genuinely ignorant who do.
Okay, gang.
This is *UN*intentionally hilarious:
The Gospel According to Apostle Barack
(serious, not tongue-in-cheek)
http://www.amazon.com/Gospel-According-Apostle-Barack-ebook/dp/B008TKFWDS/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top%23reader_B008TKFWDS
For a good laugh, do read ^all^ the reviews . . .
(Isn’t it an Alinsky tenet that an excellent weapon is ridicule?)
MJR Oh sweet baby Jesus, that is so wrong on so many levels I can’t begin to list them.
…I learned that Jesus walked the earth to create a more civilized society…but, Apostle Barack, the name he was called in my dreams, would walk the earth to create a more equalized society, for the middle class and working poor. Apostle Barack, the next young leader with a new cause, had been taken to the mountaintop and allowed to see over the other side. He had the answers to unlock the kingdom of “heaven here on earth” for his followers.
There is simply no way to combat this kind of moonbattery. Though, to give them credit, a handful of Amazon reviewers tried.
@Baklava : at 7:38 pm Davisbr, you kidding me???
LOL.
Only partially my friend.
M J R:
The 5-star and 2-star reviews were pretty good.
Well, I’ll be!
I thought there were only one-star reviews, except for the sole (sarcastic) five-star review. So I went back to have another look, and lo and behold, yes, there was a two-star review in there (second one from the beginning).
Thanks for following the link . . .
So nice to see the Frogman back. It’s too bad that it takes a calamity (the election of Hollande or the recent unpleasantness) to goad him into writing. Thanks, bro!